Every day there’s a new airfare sale, hotel deal or hot redemption that comes along. Invariably, when I check whether these sales are leveragable for an upcoming trip I’m planning I find I can’t take advantage of them for one reason or another.
For me, chasing sales is a distracting waste of time
Most “deals” are date restricted, and limited in other ways as well. So even if a sale appears for a flight or hotel I’m interested in, it often doesn’t work for me. As a result, I can easily spend 10 to 15 minutes per deal trying to figure out why I can’t get it to work for my situation.
When I discover that a deal is more restricted than the headline indicates I get annoyed with both the travel provider and the site mentioning the deal.
So I decided to stop paying attention to fare sales and hotel deals.
Take the trips you want to take
You might be more date and destination flexible than I am. And there’s nothing wrong with letting an actionable deal sway you between equally appealing choices.
But ravenously following a flight or hotel deal site strikes me as akin to walking into Home Depot and saying: “So what’s on sale here today?”
We wouldn’t do that, so why let travel deals determine where we’re going to go? Instead, create a Travel Demand Schedule then figure out how to best fund each component of your trips.
We only have so many vacations in our lives and kids grow up quickly. I don’t want to look back and think “I always wanted to visit XYZ but it was never on sale.”
Create your own deals
The problem with most deals is a lack of broad applicability.
That’s why a deal you can repeatedly and reliably take advantage of is much more impactful than a one-off sale.
See: The Net Present Value of a Deal
I think it’s important to focus on high ROI opportunities and when possible create your own deals – by creating a system that makes points, miles & cashback work for you.
Figure out what you want to do, then work backwards. There will be plenty of real deals along the way that help make your travel dreams a reality. And they’ll be the trips you want to take rather than what some airline or hotel chain decided to put on sale.
That’s what we’re all about here at Milenomics. Even if we think alike, everyone’s approach to travel is personal.
Sam and I discuss how different our Demand Schedules are and how that informs how we go about earning points, miles & cashback [and much more] in the most recent edition of the Milenomics² Podcast for paid subscribers. I’d love it if you subscribed and checked it out.
To get a feel for what the show is like check out the free version.
Either way, we’ll look forward to continuing the conversation.